Nobel Peace Prize: politics and history

Alfred Nobel said the Peace Prize should be awarded to an individual who had
contributed to "fraternity between nations, for the abolition or
reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace
congresses."

Despite their noble mandate, the five politicians charged with administering the world's most prestigious peace prize are creatures of the global system of power the inventor hoped his prize would help dismantle.

Mr Nobel had decided that the Peace Prize would be awarded by Norwegians instead, as with all the other Nobel Prizes, Sweden. Historians have speculated that Mr Nobel hoped his gesture would save the failing political union between Norway and Sweden, which was to collapse soon after his death.

Perhaps Mr Nobel also believed that Norway's decision to maintain a studious distance from the major European powers would free it from partisan pressures. "Our foreign policy", Jurgen Luvland, Norway's first foreign secretary, said in 1905, "is not to have one."

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But politics did intrude on Norway, and soon. In 1923, the committee gave the prize to Theodore Roosevelt, for broking an end to the Russia-Japan war some historians now argue he helped spark off the first place.

Famous for proclaiming that his policy was to "speak softly and carry a big stick," Mr. Roosevelt was a proponent of controversial interventionist policies in Latin America.

Haldvan Koht, the committee's adviser, pointed out in a report that Mr Roosevelt had long been opposed to the peace movement. He described Mr Roosevelt as an imperialist, and said his support of armed intervention in Latin America "is something more than politics, it is religion."

Nonetheless, the committee chose to award Mr Roosevelt. The New York Times wryly observed that the Peace Prize had gone "to the most warlike citizen of these United States."

In the absence of a better explanation, some historians believe the prize was given because newly-independent Norway needed a powerful friend.

Norway hasn't faced a major external threat since the end of the Cold War.

The Prize is, however, awarded by a committee which reflects the country's geostrategic understanding. The five-member committee is appointed by the Stortling, Norway's parliament, and reflects its current balance of power.

The committee's current members, critics have pointed out, have little hands-on experience of global politics.

Inner-Marie Ytterhorn, who represented the right-wing populist Progress Party, had no governmental experience before she was elected on to the committee. Neither did Agot Valle, who represents the Socialist Left party.

Kaci Kullman Five, the deputy chairman of the committee, had led Norway's Conservatives, but left that position after being attacked for leading the party into a meltdown. Sissel Ronbeck, a former Labour minister, retired from politics back in 1993.

Thorbjurn Jagland, the chairman of the committee, the one member who does hold high office, was assailed in Norway's press last year for accepting appointment as general-secretary of the Council of Europe – a job which comes with an $380,000 tax-free salary, and a mansion complete with servants.

Media in Norway argued that the appointment sat ill with the national values of Lutheran-inspired egalitarianism that the Nobel Peace Prize is supposed to represent.

Not everyone is persuaded that oil-rich Norway's distance from the sometimes violent and often sordid thrust of global politics equips its leaders to make dispassionate judgments on the world.

"The world would be a better place if everyone acted like Norwegians, most Norwegians think," the journalist Kjetil Wiedswang observed, "sometimes forgetting the fact that is easier to be a lover of peace and harmony when you are filthy rich."